Virtual piano comparison

RIP I don't have any insights other than what they advertise. Classical may be better for a player perspective and Classical Recording for an audience perspective.

Personally, I started from Classical Recording and created a player perspective from it for my day to day usage.

Classical: This preset offers a BA micing perspective with a classical sound.
Classical Recording: This preset is recommended for classical recording. Equipped with 4 mics: BA micing plus 2 ambience mics.

The differences are fairly extensive, howeve:

navindra I don't have any insights other than what they advertise.

Thanks, even just that is more than I knew 🙂

navindra Classical may be better for a player perspective and Classical Recording for an audience perspective.

Frankly I don't hear much "difference" from that point of view in PTQ. The mono/recording/binaural/stereo do have a difference between them, but it's not as dramatic as e.g. recordings of Matthew Lien on YT when a binaural mic. Perhaps we can start a separate thread on this topic.

navindra The differences are fairly extensive, however:

I see, that's quite a long list and of some changes that are pretty dramatic for the timbre.

But you did not comment on my main claim:

RIP Among all of these, I like the original PTQ from @CyberGene which I have been able to reproduce with my demo from his MIDI. The original Garritan is a close second.

RIP I initially tried rendering the MIDI file with PTQ Classic (rather than "Classical Recording", see the description in CG's post) and it sound horrible, that setting is definitely the worse of the group.

What do you think about this rating? I know you must prefer yours, but do you hear such a large difference?

FWIW, I re-listened to it now, and as usual my impressions of PTQ change from one day to the other… Not as dramatically as in other cases for this test, but I would not call the difference so total as I did yesterday. I relistened to some of them and still VSL is definitely not my favorite, it sounds very synthetic to me 🤯

RIP What do you think about this rating? I know you must prefer yours, but do you hear such a large difference?

Among the Pianoteq options in this thread, I still like my Bluebird preset the best -- surprise! 😃

To satisfy your curiosity, I also tried to play with the Classical preset and I hated it. It is very loud and very direct, but it feels unrefined to me in terms of tone/control/dynamic range. I'm not sure why Modartt made it the first preset, but I didn't spend any time trying to fix it either as I have good presets already.

FWIW, I re-listened to it now, and as usual my impressions of PTQ change from one day to the other… Not as dramatically as in other cases for this test, but I would not call the difference so total as I did yesterday. I relistened to some of them and still VSL is definitely not my favorite, it sounds very synthetic to me 🤯

I don't think you can replay a MIDI against different VSTs (or even presets in some cases) and make truly valid comparisons.

Ever since David's videos, I've admired the Bosendorfer Imperial and Modern U but not the 280VC (as it just sounds like Pianoteq). I'm happy with Pianoteq U4 as Modern U equivalent, but I'd like something like the Bosendorfer Imperial in Pianoteq as well.

The Bosendorfer Imperial is quite special in my opinion.

navindra To satisfy your curiosity, I also tried to play with the Classical preset and I hated it.

Thanks, good to know it was not just me

navindra I don't think you can replay a MIDI against different VSTs (or even presets in some cases) and make truly valid comparisons.

Yes, I agree. But since we are making such a comparison anyway, I am posting my impressions 😆

I preferred number 2 for its less bright tone.

Also, I thought number 2 had too much extra sound outside the fundamental tone, perhaps resonance or harmonics.

Both pianos seemed like they were played with a lot of pedal.

navindra Ever since David's videos, I've admired the Bosendorfer Imperial and Modern U but not the 280VC (as it just sounds like Pianoteq). I'm happy with Pianoteq U4 as Modern U equivalent, but I'd like something like the Bosendorfer Imperial in Pianoteq as well.

I've owned every VSL Synchron Piano library at one time and the only one I find myself playing everyday is the Bösendorfer Imperial. Each one has a unique attribute that I appreciate, but the BI is the only one I feel has a more complete package. It's nice to have options and it's great to find something that inspires us. Tonight I switched to the N1X internal CFX sound and it only took a few minutes to realize how disappointing it is compared to the VSL BI.

God Bless,
David

vagfilm I think the boxy sound was a conjugation of wrong setting of render volume with Reaper and lack of normalization. I redid the renders, and since the original file uses low MIDI values, I now used the linear MIDI velocity in the Synchron player. If there is "nasalness" here, I have been calling nasal to something else...

I have forgotten about that. Just listened to the two files and compared them to your first versions. I think something has been totally messed up the first time because the new versions are totally different. Your original versions are almost mono like, not sure what's causing it but the new ones are night and day, nice stereo, wide.

I still sense the Steinway's nasal character but it's much better this time. To be honest, Pianoteq has the same nasal type of mids, so maybe Pianoteq is good in emulating this type of Steinway after all? 😱

For the sake of piano science, and since they are a bit forgotten in these comparisons, I asked a friend to render the Cybergene "test-pieces" in two VSTs that I am very curious and always tempted to buy: the Bechstein Digital and the VILabs Ravenscroft.
The Bechstein was a complete disappointment, too shrill and jumpy. I am not posting it because I think the VST is better than that and it is simply an unfortunate mismatch.
On the other hand, the Ravenscroft works pretty well for this type of playing. You judge...
Note: I had to further compress the mp3s to meet the 2Mb limit.

vagfilm For what it's worth, the Bechstein Digital can have a pretty hard/pointy tone. It's a good instrument, but it's not a forgiving one IMO.

@CyberGene I am a big fan of Pianoteq, but a bigger fan of Garritan, so I was surprised that I preferred the PT rendering here!

vagfilm Not bad, although I miss some ambience and rich resonance. I guess Ravenscroft would be ideal for straight ahead jazz and modern music though because it’s very clean sounding.

CyberGene I guess Ravenscroft would be ideal for straight ahead jazz and modern music though because it’s very clean sounding.

This!

It somehow sounds like a mix between a harpsichord and a piano (in a good way).

P.S.

I don’t always drink beer (samples), but when I do, I drink a Ravens!

With only twelve calories (layers), Ravens is both satisfying and good for your health; unlike that monstrosity, VSL, packing 100 calories per key, and still, I somehow feel unsatisfied.

P.P.S.

Ravenscroft is the little engine that could, and it further proves my point: the only room for improvement is transitioning to modelling; because more layers does not for a better VST make. of course, I’m not saying that there is no improvement between 1 layer and say 12 layers, but once you go past 15 layers it’s overkill!

12 or 15 is likely to be the threshold after which it is hard to hear a velocity gap between layers (if the layers are mixed correctly of course). With Pearl Concert Grand, we have 8 layers and there is a very slight gap between layers. We have to be careful to hear them.

CyberGene I guess Ravenscroft would be ideal for straight ahead jazz and modern music though because it’s very clean sounding.

I agree… and since I play mostly classical music, it doesn’t fit my taste. It has a special character : we like it or not, but this doesn’t mean it is not good.

I agree with Frederic’s initial agreement on my previous observation: past 15 layers, it’s overkill!

But I am forced to disagree on this notion that ‘classical’ can only be played with ‘extra sauce’.

Some people like it dry, Frederic, and I can mention one very prominent “people”, Glenn Gould!

He’d most certainly enjoy the Ravens’ lean cuisine over the gravy-heavy VSL, and that is my whole point, the VSL adds too much gravy; and sure, excess gravy can help mask the fact that it is essentially unhealthy, over-cooked, stuffed turkey, but it doesn’t fool me, I tell ya!

P.S.

I like my turkey dry, unstuffed, and devoid of all things gravy!

vagfilm I like Ravenscroft very much. This doesn’t sound like the default settings to me. (Close mics only). Could you share your settings please?

TomLC I like Ravenscroft very much

Boy, am I having a good day today!

Usually it’s “off to purgatory with that pesky Pete,” but today, it seems, most are in ‘agreement’ with Pete on the Ravens and such…..

Good day, indeed!😉

TomLC Could you share your settings please?

Unfortunately no, because it was not done by me. And knowing my friend, he clicked on some random settings and cannot reproduce it😊 Only thing I know is that it uses all mics (maybe at different levels). Sorry... Do you like it or not? I may ask him in case he saved the preset...

CyberGene I personally prefer the Yamaha CFX voice over any Pianoteq EP. But I also prefer the analog Yamaha CP over Ptq as well.

It would have been nice having a real acoustic recording thrown into the mix, while recording the virtual instruments through microphones as well. Would be amusing to see how many people dislike an original and go for the digital fake instead.

Deleted It would have been nice having a real acoustic recording thrown into the mix, while recording the virtual instruments through microphones as well. Would be amusing to see how many people dislike an original and go for the digital fake instead.

This has got me thinking about making a recording on my piano, using the same mic position to make a VI, playing the same piece with the VI, and then comparing them. I'm pretty sure I can make them sound almost identical, but with caveats.

Recording, processing, and using all of the Kontakt EQ/velocity mapping tricks is very time consuming. So if I were to limit the recorded piece to something simple without many dynamic layers it wouldn't be too difficult.

But then if the piece were too simple, it would not really test out the quality of the VI.

Maybe its not worth the effort.

vagfilm Yes, I do like it.